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June 8, 2026 12 mins
On the Jim Colbert Show Attorney "Friendly" Ray Traendly of TK Law discusses the trial for the Melbourne man accused of starting the Palisades fire that resulted in 12 deaths.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
There's dead. Hello, Jack is here as well. Yeah, And
every single Monday around this time, this gentleman drops by
to talk about things in the world in DeLand. How
you doing, good, friend.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Other than being disparaged by you all day long? I
am doing okay.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Disparaged by whom?

Speaker 2 (00:14):
By you?

Speaker 1 (00:14):
What have I done?

Speaker 2 (00:15):
I got messages that my attire Friday night? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I got. I'm now trying to eliminate all the squirrels
in your neighborhood chat.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
I said.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
What I said was, I said, I never seen you
in street clothes. Every time I see you out, I
think I've seen you literally one time in street clothes,
even at the poker tournament when you show up like
you have a suit on. I've only seen you like
in a polo and chinos one time in my life.
And I come out there and then you were there,
and I was expecting to see Ray in some street
clothes when he wearing lawyer.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Suit always Sea.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
You could have come on the bucks busts when when
we went we're Ray. Oh yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
That was casual. Ray, we had to be casual. It
was like August, it was hot, it was warm. Yeah,
it hasn't been about how you doing. I'm doing okay,
you know, I think you're onto something with the kiddie
pool though.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
And they can jump from the ground to the top,
or they could jump from the pole and hook their
Have you ever held one?

Speaker 2 (01:11):
So I've been attacked by squirrels before.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, their nails they're so unbelievably sharp. You just can't
believe how sharp they are. And their teeth they will
tear you apart. Yeah, brutally. Actually, the one that we
rescued bit through my wife's hand.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
So that's how I got attacked. Was there was one
that was hit by a bicycle and was, you know, suffering,
and so I picked it up and I was gonna
take it to the veterinarian and it chewed me up.
It scratched me up.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Dude, scroll right up into that point. And then she
did not love the scroll so much.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
That's fair.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Uh, you know, we wanted to talk to you today
about this because I find this interesting as hell. So
it's this arson case. I guess they're doing a Jersey
say right now, right? And this guy twenty three years old?
Whatever started the Palisades fire? Right? Is he twenty three
or twenty six, twenty nine years old. Okay started this fire.
And what I read today I was like, God, man,

(02:01):
this is unbelievable. This guy is only facing like forty five,
forty one to forty five years in prison and he
started a fire that killed twelve people. And Jeb, did
you ever look up how much it costs? Yeah, it
was a I was always under the estimation that when
you are an arsonist and you started a fire there
was always a threat of death there, like, because the

(02:25):
only thing I could figure out.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
I just wanted to let you know. The Palisades Fire
in southern California in early twenty twenty five was the
costiest costliest wildfire event on record globally, with insured losses
of forty billion dollars.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
So forty billion dollars in damage in twelve lives, and
this guy's only facing forty five years. Theoretically, with good behavior,
could be out by the time he's fifty five.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Well, and these are the federal charges that he's he's
currently under trial for that we're seeing. And so federal
law is different from state loss. They do have it
in California and they just rarely employed. You say, yeah,
say because I felt like it came up with the
Mendoza brothers.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
And also with the rob Reinder.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
So you always have the state laws of possibility, but
when you're when you're dealing with federal law and you're
dealing with specifically these types of crimes. Where as far
as I understand the facts, it was a situation where
he may have started this fire, the fire department came
extinguished it, and they believe that due to high winds,

(03:27):
seven days later, it reignited and caused this big fire.
And and the the problem that the prosecutors are going
to have is proving that he had some type of intent,
some type of criminal intent we call it men's rea,
which is this criminal intent that you want to cause
harm to people. They're going to have a really hard
time proving that because I think the AI or the

(03:50):
Google search that he had on his computer was what
happens if you start a fire with a cigarette, right
that wasn't properly extinguished. It's somethings of that effect. So
he didn't have the intent of starting the fire. He
was just negligent, right. He was criminally negligent, probably by
the fact that you know, there's all these high risk
warnings for fire and but conceptually negligent. And so when

(04:14):
you're dealing with negligent type based crimes, to put somebody
to death for that, usually the punishment doesn't fit the crime.
We want the people that are premeditated murder, you know,
capital offenses, like we had them talk about that with
the trees and stuff, with the January sixth stuff. Those
are the types of things we're normally looking at when
we're talking about capital punishment, and so so that's the

(04:37):
reason why capital punishment's not on the table.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, the last person that was executed in California was
two thousand and six. Agavin knew some put a moratorium
into if I set fire to a building with people involved,
and then you know, people die, and I go, well,
I was just trying to scare people. I didn't really
intend for anybody to die. I mean, couldn't you easily
say that with this? I mean I wanted to set
something on fire. I had no idea. Every possible indicator

(05:01):
showed that not only could this grow very quickly, it
could also sweep through neighbor I.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Feel like he tried to call nine one one at
some point, and again from my memory, I felt like
maybe he couldn't get into nine one one to make
that nine one one call, and that was with the
first fire. And so I think to some degree, if
you're looking at mitigating facts, right, facts that would suggest

(05:27):
that maybe he wasn't trying to start a fire, that
maybe this was more accidental. I think that one goes
into that category of he didn't really want to burn
this building down and and oh, by the way, now
all these things happened, he was just again I don't
know if they've ever been able to find the source
of this fire. He was just negligent.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
He threw that out of the case.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, the judge rule that prosecutors cannot introduce AI images
that render necked was allegedly created of fire's.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Evidence that you can use, and you can really rely
on to say, here's proof that they intended it starts
his fire. So when you can't prove those things from
a prosecutor standpoint, it makes more sense to go with
something that doesn't have that type of criminal intent component
to it, where it's much more simple did you start
this fire? Did this fire cause this damage? And then

(06:17):
that way it's I don't say it's easier, but now
you're only proving cause and effect, right, No, right, you
only have to prove that he was the proximate cause
for that fire, so that his cigarette in that original
fire is what then led to this this big Palisates fire.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
And it wasn't there another thing though with them about
something that var County.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
He was working as an uber driver, and I remember
when the earlier had arrested him, he had expressed some
kind of like the yeah, like yet the rich not.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
I mean, I don't know how deep motivation has to go.
I don't know if a one sentence statement in a
in a post or I don't I don't know how
deep that goes. But I mean that you know, if
you're looking for intent.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
Well, prosecutors intend to frame Rendernect as a mentally disturbed
man who was fascinated by fire and the concept of
cities burning to the ground.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
Again.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
They've amassed thousands of pieces of evidence, including chet GPT prompts,
AI images, and videos, they say, and nothing can directly
tie the fire he's accused of setting to the Palisades
fire rather than the other two fires. One week of
art in the same area.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
That's the thing I thought that would be the most
difficult thing, that's approximate costs that.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
But for his starting that original fire, this second fire
never would have happened. And again I wasn't aware of
the thousands of pieces of evidence that show that he
had this fascination fire. I think that definitely hurts his
case a little bit because as a juror sitting there,
you know in this community, right because the jury of
your peers in this community, that they're probably going to

(07:49):
be pretty concerned that he has this obsession with fire.
And then you know, add that into what it's possible,
but it has to be it has to prove be
unreasonable doubt that he was approximate cosaic. But for that action,
this never would have happened.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
To be tough though, But I want to ask also,
you said these are federal charges. What takes precedent? So
when this federal case is done, can he be again
California can now come at him as well. Is there
a reason why do the Feds always get the first shot.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
It's not always, but it is a form of preemption
where we usually have to Feds get the first kind
of bite at the apples.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
That helps set a precedent for you guys like in
other words, if he gets Okay, here's my thing is
we hear about this with traffic all the time. Like
you can't introduce information from other Like you can't tell
somebody who's currently being charged with DUI that they had
another dui. You know what I'm saying. So with this case,
if they if you went to trial in California, could
attorneys in California say, well, well, the Fed's got him,

(08:48):
the Fed's convicted him with all this stuff. I mean,
so obviously he's your guy. Here's the case. You do
what you will. I mean, can they not use that information?

Speaker 2 (08:56):
I would be able to use the information they would, Yeah,
as long as there's been a conviction, that would be
all the information. Now.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
Somebody also texted us at seven seven zero three one
saying that there is no parole or.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
In a trial like this, oftentimes the court's not going
to be lenient in the sentencing and open leave the
door open for good behavior the damage based off of
what I know of the evidence, which you know is
not as in depth as it could be. Uh, you know,
I would say I would probably take this case. I
think it's an interesting issue. I think anytime you're dealing

(09:28):
with any type of reconstruction from an accident or from
a fire, there's always the possibility that your expert prevails.
Where your expert is more persuasive, the jury understands what
they have to say better. But I do think that
this is definitely an uphill battle where you know, again,
trying to convince the jury of your peers that you

(09:49):
had nothing to do with this. If apparently, if there's
thousands of images and and and I just remember one search,
so if there's thousands, I mean, that's that's not looking good.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
What is the I mean, I don't you don't have
to answer or this if you don't want to, But yeah,
I don't. I don't know what the protocol is or
I don't want to be offensive because I don't know.
When you it's.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
Easier to use as an example. So they come to
me and they say, this is what I'm being charged with.
And here's the thing I think I'm going through and
making sure that I get a good understanding of who
this person is. I'm probably gonna tell them to take
some type of action up front to try to mitigate
how how they look maybe in the public eye, and

(10:25):
depending on how receptive they are some of those suggestions
and some of the advice I give them.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Do you interview their friends and family? Oh absolutely, you
go and say obviously facebook and social media history, But
then you go to their closest friends and say, hey,
I mean, does your guy, did your guy ever show
any propensity? Do you ever talk about studying fires? Did
he seem to have a fascination with things burning?

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Or I'll tell you what's Even more than friends and family,
I go to their employers and former employers, because you know,
a lot of times that's where you show yourself and
you know, if there's you know, those signs, usually the
employers will see it before their parents.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
Will or litibility. You want me to want to admit
to it. Yeah, less appt to cover for them as
a family member as well.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah, right, So I've talked to employers. Neighbors are sometimes helpful,
just kind of depending on the situation. I've had teachers,
you know, especially when somebody has been you know, younger,
have teachers come in and say, hey, he's a really
good kid. They had a hard you know, hard life,
and you know they deserve a second chance. Stuff like that. Yeah.

(11:28):
I mean, I don't do I don't do as much
criminal defense as I used to do in a past life.
But yeah, maybe like five or ten percent cases where
I go through that kind of detail up front. Most
of the time it's it's on the back end.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yeah. But you can even have that with the divorces,
right if somebody you and they want a divorce, they're
telling you one side of the story, and you get
out of this, you know, by my side. Interesting, man,
I wonder what's gonna happen with this case. You brought
up a very good point. I would have never can.
I mean, I thought they had him dead nuts. I mean,
you know, Depp says, they do have a lot of evidence.
But I'm interested to see what that what happens there,
and then of course after the fact in California, obviously
there's he's got no way to pay back in the

(12:00):
of the money, so there's no restitution coming his way,
coming their way. So very interesting stuff. I always continue, buddy, go.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
To see you.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
I getting this very Trently one firm for Life dot
Com TK Laws. The firm offices right there in Longwood
and in DeLand. Give him a call. We'll talk to
him for a few moments before we get out of here.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
WF for news, Well, we're going to have an update
on that earthquake in the Gulf. There is a tragic
investigation near Hollywood Beach, and where you can study up
on K pop
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